A stay at home Dad tries to keep up

Luke

There has been a long history of Luke cooking his own concoctions in our kitchen. It started so many years ago when we literally found him all alone in the kitchen, knee deep in flour and eggs. Low and behold a cake he had indeed made! We gratefully donated it to a friends birthday celebration.

Cut to about two weeks ago when Lily decided to start her own baking creations. “Can I make a cake?”

This has turned now into a routine activity.

We even had Luke and Lily cakes for desert the other night. Mom and I were very full and opted for just a bite or two, but Luke dutifully ate quite a slice, god bless him.

Today’s seminar took on a feverish pace, with a constant checking and Re-checking of levels of sweetness and a very specific attention paid what the other baker was doing and adding. Your adding chocolate?, I’m gonna add chocolate!

It all reminds me of this bugs bunny clip so much I can’t help but post it, so you can better understand the intensity of the whole affair.

I sat and watched as the amount of cleanup grew, and grew and grew. I thought fast, because what I was expecting was “I’m done” and a speedy exit. So before that happened I made some new house rules about the baking show.

Counter top needs to be be exactly as how you found it.

It worked!

Cakes were finished, some looked better than others, life goes on until the next episode of:

Ever since reading that you can change the startup screen on the Toyota minivan console I have been meaning to. I just love that kind of stuff.

Yesterday I was finally ready to do it and realized I didn’t know what I wanted my custom image to look like?, then I thought, hey why not photoshop up a minvan-copter? The kids will love it!

Of course the idea of adding some sort of aeronautical device to the minivan is almost as old as this blog, but for whatever reason, Luke has been talking about it a lot recently.

The original concept was wooden wings, but Luke soon confessed he felt they would be too cumbersome. The recent version is a helicopter prop, so I put both ideas together and came up with this:

I loaded into the car, I go get Luke from school, he sees it instantly and goes:

“What’s that?”

I explain it was something I did.

“That looks pretty good, Dad, good idea. If that is your finished plan then all I think I need to add is some polyurethane.”

Sounds great Luke.

A day later he comes up to me and states very matter of factually:

“I’m going to have to see the gas tank. I need to see if there is enough room for a super charger?”

Ok, Luke, sounds good.

“The super charger will allow the minivan to go 120,000 miles an hour” he says with raised eye brows.

“It will only take two minutes to get to Legoland!”

I do some quick math out loud and discover it will take closer to 2 seconds at that speed to get to Legoland and Luke is now REALLY impressed.

The other part of the equation is how much is NOT on his radar and I believe it is linked to access to media. My example is this. Luke loves Lego’s, Luke will stroll down the Lego aisle at Target and study the boxes and point out all kinds of detailed thoughts. Luke has never seen a Lego movie. So why is it that he never ONCE has asked about the Lego movie posters that a strewn about the world, on the side of buses only inches from his face sometimes, never says a word. If we had seen a Lego movie I believe it would be otherwise.

Meanwhile a super charged mini-copter is TOTALLY on his radar, big time!

Luke remembered that there is a “Santa’s mailbox” at mom’s work the other day and instantly dashed this off:

He has been dutifully asking for the Lego Cargo Train for three years, and very nicely explained to me and mom, that is has been that long and that at this point Santa HAS to comply.

I think he is right, and just want to mention that this is also the boy that will energetically and with complete intensity play air hockey on a little battery powered air hockey set by himself and keep score, and stay excited the whole game.